Movie review: It was crazy to remake 'The Crazies'

Ed Symkus

Friday

Feb 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMFeb 26, 2010 at 7:39 PM

Like the virus that drives people insane at the center of this horror item’s plot, there’s also a virus in Hollywood that makes producers look for old, perfectly fine movies, then remake them for contemporary audiences.

Like the virus that drives people insane at the center of this horror item’s plot, there’s also a virus in Hollywood that makes producers look for old, perfectly fine movies, then remake them for contemporary audiences.

Oddly, in these days of grotesque and overbearing violence in horror films – the “Saw” franchise, the “Hostel” films – many of the remakes have actually toned down the gore that made the originals stand out.

The recent redos of “Halloween” and “The Last House on the Left” had their scary moments, but they couldn’t hold a jack-o’-lantern to the rampaging violence of their ’70s predecessors.

The same is true of “The Crazies.”

It’s still the story of small-towners quickly going nuts, picking up whatever weapon or farm implement they can find, and using them on others. It’s still all blamed on the government – another version of an experiment gone awry. And it still focuses on a group of survivors who are just trying to get out of town intact.

Newcomers to the film might find it fun, exhilarating, even scary at points. Fans of George Romero’s 1973 original are going to be disappointed. That film’s wind has been taken out of its sails.

Gone are Romero’s complicated, Stephen King-like story strands, as well as his ever-present political digs. And even though Romero executive-produced the remake, gone also is that special grim energy that he was always able to conjure up.

But this isn’t all bad. Both Timothy Olyphant, as the sheriff hero, and Radha Mitchell, as his pregnant nurse wife, are effective in getting us to root for them. Olyphant, who was so menacing in “Live Free or Die Hard,” plays it low-key here, taking in all of the mayhem around him with a believable calmness. Mitchell lets some desperation show through in her eyes, but she’s never seen as a damsel in distress.

The constant questions about who’s been affected by the virus and who’s normal creates an air of paranoia. For instance, what’s going on in the heads of a group of people when one of them starts coughing? That feeling isn’t helped by all of those government helicopters flying overhead, ever ready to shoot down or bomb anyone – infected or clean – who’s running from them.

There’s some nail-biting bloody stuff at a funeral home, and there are quite a few imaginative killings.

But the film falls short of what it could have, should have been when it resorts to clichés. When it’s discovered that the virus is spread through the water supply, the mayor won’t act on it because this takes place in farming country and, he argues, the crops will be ruined. Sounds an awful lot like the mayor in “Jaws” refusing to close the beaches because it’s tourist season.

So much in this script is telegraphed (the camera is held an awfully long time on a cigarette lighter), and far too much that happens is pretty much expected to happen. We’ve seen this type of film so many times that, with the exception of a few well-placed shocks, the fear factor doesn’t exist anymore.

THE CRAZIES (Rated R for bloody violence and language.) Cast includes Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell. Directed by Breck Eisner. 2 stars out of 4.

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